Publication Day is here!
We are excited to be releasing Lauren K. Alleyne's latest collection, Honeyfish, today.
Originally hailing from Trinidad and Tobago, Alleyne is an acclaimed writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Honeyfish is her second poetry collection to be proudly published by Peepal Tree Press.
The collection faces the realities of life and death and their varying complexities. Bookended by mourning the deaths of African Americans who have perished at police hands, the book deals with the issues of race, misogyny and dislocations of migration.
Honeyfish, already an award-winning collection which won the 2018 Green Rose Prize by New Issues Press (US), is receiving terrific praise:
"In exquisitely crafted poems of heart-accelerating candor and clarity, Lauren K. Alleyne says to all the black
bodies slain by hatred and militarized fear, "Nothing I say will save you, but how can I say nothing?"
Honeyfish is an elegy for all the countless lost, and a praise song for the many black lives that persist
in their wish to give and receive love." - Tracy K. Smith
Published widely in numerous journals and anthologies, with several honours to her name, Peepal Tree Press is pleased to have Alleyne with us for this latest collection. A collection which is filled with wonderful poems like 'What the Living Know':
What We The Living Know
We disappoint.
We forget our dreams.
Fear beats inside us like a second heart,
and we dance our days to it.
Our bodies confound us;
in return we hurl them
against the edges of safety -
highways and drive-thrus,
mouths draped in dangerous smiles -
or else we make gods of them
(which means the same).
We manacle our spirits
to this world, name it
living.
Now living and working in Virginia, USA, Alleyne is the Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Centre and an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University.
To read more of Alleyne's work, you can find both collections, Difficult Fruit (2014) and Honeyfish on our website.
